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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28146888">In Bluebeard's Castle</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly'>aurilly</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>His Dark Materials (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bathing/Washing, Bathroom Sex, Boreal Has Feelings, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:28:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,881</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28146888</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lord Boreal takes Thomas home after the stair incident and patches him up. </p><p>Thomas takes this as an opportunity to learn more.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Carlo Boreal/Thomas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>In Bluebeard's Castle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts">Esteliel</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to unforgotten for the beta!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Thomas woke in a most uncomfortable position, and in pain so excruciating that he immediately regretted having regained consciousness. He had been laid across the back seat of a car, with his legs bent awkwardly to fit. He could tell something was terribly wrong with his right arm, which sent sharp pulses of anguish every time the vehicle ran over what were probably pebbles. In addition to the unnatural angle, something sticky and warm kept his arm plastered to the leather.</p><p>Squinting his eyes open a fraction, he saw a glowing screen in the middle of the front seats.</p><p>He was in a Tesla.</p><p>Something must have happened, he reasoned. He remembered the raid, the boy, the stairs, the godforsaken cat. And then… nothing. Perhaps some vague lights and snatches of conversation. Something important had been said, he thought, if only he could remember.</p><p>"Are you taking me to hospital?" he croaked. Although he couldn't quite see at this angle, there could only be one driver; Charles would never let anyone else drive his car.</p><p>"No. Unless the hospitals of this world operate very differently than those in mine—with purely anonymous goodwill—I assume the doctors would ask too many inconvenient questions. Questions about where you were tonight and what you were doing to sustain such injuries. I cannot afford questions."</p><p>Thomas felt too weak to follow Charles's habitually precise yet long-winded explanations (never explanations of anything Thomas wanted to hear about, mind you). All he heard was the first word: "no".</p><p>"I think I need a hospital," he tried to insist, but it came out more like a plea.</p><p>"You'll do just fine in my care. This may surprise you, but I do know a thing or two about keeping people alive."</p><p>Thomas held his tongue after that. The pain had flared up again as they turned a corner, and it took all his strength not to scream; Charles only liked Thomas to give voice to pain when Charles was the one inflicting it.</p><p>To distract himself, he lay there and tried to unpack Charles's statement. The words did not promise more than a terrifyingly low baseline level of competence. More disturbing were the decidedly unsavory applications implied. However, the wry indulgence Charles had infused into his voice set Thomas relatively at ease. Charles's competence at anything he set his mind to usually exceeded "baseline". He liked to take matters into his own hands whenever he could; his hands were very capable, at a variety of skills.</p><p>Thomas knew this very well.</p><p>He also knew that Charles liked it when he pushed. It was the reason that Thomas alone remained of all the bright young men Charles had employed over the years. It was the reason that Thomas alone had been made privy to Charles's biggest secret, as well as his bed.</p><p>So, without whining, he said, in as matter-of-fact a tone as he could muster, "I'm bleeding."</p><p>"Do you think I failed to notice that when I carried you into the car?" Charles glanced in the rearview mirror. His brow furrowed at what must have been Thomas's glazed glance. "How do you feel?"</p><p>"Like I need a hospital," Thomas pressed, to see what else he could learn from these non-responses. He had been playing this game for a long time, and would have ranked as a grandmaster, had decrypting Charles been an organized sport.</p><p>"If you're feeling well enough for this much backchat, you'll be fine," Charles said with a huff he apparently thought came across as 'playful'; it was anything but, but Thomas heard the underlying intention. "I give you my word."</p><p>Thomas turned this exchange over and over in his head for the remainder of the drive. Charles was taking Thomas to his home. Charles was planning to personally play nursemaid. Charles, who promised nothing, and felt responsible for even less, had given his word assuring Thomas's well-being.</p><p>All of which meant that, underneath the scolding and the dismissals, Charles was <i>worried</i> about him. Thomas wouldn't have believed it had he not already felt his blood leaking onto the car seat, without Charles seeming even remotely upset about it.</p><p>The last time Thomas had dirtied the precious leather, Charles had made him clean up the mess. With his tongue. And then spanked him raw when they'd arrived at the house. The mess in question had been Charles's come, expertly coaxed out of him by Thomas's tongue whilst stopped at a particularly long red light. Thomas had not objected to Charles's demand for a dangerously public blow job at the time, nor even to the underlying mentality of ownership that drove it, but he might have tried to stave off the climax had he known in advance the sheer volume that Charles had built up—too much to ever hope to manage in his mouth—probably in preparation for this punishment.</p><p>What previous experience had taught him was that if Charles wasn't complaining now, it was because he was <i>beside</i> himself with worry.</p><p>Thomas flitted in and out of consciousness a few times, taking in the next little while only in flashes. Being carried, bridal-style, across the threshold of Charles's front door, and then up the stairs, with Charles making commanding little shushing noises at Thomas's quiet moans. Laid with infinite gentleness on a bed. The confusing sense memory of his trousers being pulled off; something Charles had done many times, but in wildly different circumstances.</p><p>Thomas felt the cold steel of a pair of scissors moving up his belly to his chest to his collar as Charles literally cut him out of his shirt. For a moment, he could feel the sharp tip of the scissors against his Adam's apple—just long enough to make an impression.</p><p>"It's a nasty wound," Charles said over him. "You got a few bits of splinter from the bannister pole stuck in your side. I am going to pull them out and then disinfect the wound."</p><p>"You've just destroyed my clothes. What am I to wear out of here?"</p><p>"Oh, I have things to dress you in," Charles said.</p><p>"To my taste?"</p><p>"No. To mine."</p><p>"My arm..." Thomas moaned, because it was not right, it was worse than being cut, it was not right and it <i>hurt</i>, hurting even more after having been jostled during the trip up the stairs.</p><p>"It's dislocated. I will set it after I clean the wound."</p><p>"Now, first, please," Thomas begged, no longer in control enough to retain his mask of composure.</p><p>Charles stroked Thomas's head with his large hands, soothing and superior. "No. This is a valuable experience, one I would neither shorten nor deny you. Days like these are how you gain courage, Thomas. The kind of courage that will allow you to one day cross with me. And you would like that, wouldn't you, Thomas?"</p><p>Thomas nodded, but only once, and a little shortly, gasping as he moved. He turned his face sideways to try to hide his excitement—excitement that Charles might one day introduce Thomas to his world—and startled to see the snake coiled on the pillow, with its piercing eyes only inches from Thomas's nose. They stared one another down until Thomas could no longer bear it. He turned back to the equally intimidating—but currently fonder—eyes of Charles.</p><p>"Instead of the dumbbells and Nautilus apparat so popular in this world," Charles continued in that calm, arousingly condescending tone, "<i>this</i> is how you build the iron that counts. Conquer your pain. Send it outside of you."</p><p>Thomas would have argued that the gym served a bit more of a purpose than that, had not he not erupted into a scream. Charles had removed the first splinter as he spoke, a long thing that he could feel sliding out of him, even more viscerally than all the times Charles's cock had slid out of him.</p><p>"That's one. You're doing so well for me Thomas. So well."</p><p>Thomas shivered and keened, but this time not because of the pain. He hated this quality in himself, this pathological delight in praise that he had never discovered about himself before Charles. But as with everything, Charles had come along, prodded at it, exposed it, sexualized it. Thomas was in far too much pain to become fully aroused, but his cock still twitched to acknowledge that, normally, it would respond.</p><p>Charles removed two more splinters and then wiped Thomas's wound, first with a wet cloth, and then with a cool, thick paste that smelled like nothing to which Thomas  could even make a comparison.</p><p>"What…?" he tried to ask.</p><p>"A poultice from my world. I keep a variety of them here, just in case. This world relies overmuch on lasers and beeps and pills. You keep your bodies at such arm's length, and your daemons invisible. You've lost the ability to converse with your own bodies, to understand a hurt. In many ways, your technology has outstripped ours, but in this, we excel. Our more tactile treatments can be more efficacious than many of your pills."</p><p>He must have been correct, because almost immediately, the pain in Thomas's  side faded to a pleasantly tingling numbness.</p><p>Now, if only Charles hadn't ruined that moment by climbing atop him and gripping Thomas's arm. Thomas braced himself; he had seen enough movies to know that this would hurt.</p><p>"You're very good, Thomas. Very lovely like this."</p><p>Thomas wanted to ask "like what"? Splayed out naked in Charles's guest bedroom? Putty in Charles's ever-arousing fingers? Bleeding and powerless, but somehow a quarter hard? Broken and twisted with his arm hanging at a strange angle? Lips biting back mewls so hard that teeth broke through his lip?</p><p>Thomas had carefully experimented and learned a lot about what made Charles tick. He knew it was likely a mix of all of the above, but he would have given a lot to know the priority list.</p><p>"It's all right if you scream."</p><p>And Thomas did scream. The last thing he felt before the white spark of pain pulled him out of consciousness was—perhaps, maybe, he'd probably never be quite sure—the snake's forked tongue licking his wrist for encouragement.</p><p>If so, if that's what he had truly felt, it would have been the first time he and the snake had ever touched.</p>
<hr/><p>When he woke again, he felt wet, warm, and wonderful. His shoulder ached a bit, but no longer with the sickening horror of wrongness and agony. The poultice must have been waterproof, because his wound felt sealed in and safe even as the rest of his body relaxed in a bubble bath.</p><p>"There you are," Charles said when he saw Thomas's eyes flutter open and heard his happy sigh.</p><p>Charles sat on a padded stool that had been upholstered to match the bland grey marble of the bathroom. He had divested himself of his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, showing off strong forearms. The snake lay stretched along the rim of the tub, watching.</p><p>Charles had run him a bath, Thomas realized. Carried him, sleeping, and placed him in it. Charles was right now rubbing a teasing, tingling loofah between Thomas's soft inner thighs.</p><p>And, judging by the heavy fullness, the slippery, oily feeling deep in his arse as he squirmed in arousal, Charles had made efficient use of Thomas's unconsciousness to prepare and plug him in such a way that he would be ready to fuck immediately afterwards.</p><p>If he hadn't already been hard, that one realization would have gotten him there. He took a deep breath and exhaled, counting to three. He needed to keep his head straight; this was an opportunity, he told himself, and not just for a magnificent fuck. He was in Charles's home, with Charles in an excellently indulgent mood. This was a chance to cajole nuggets of information out of Charles.</p><p>Thomas knew well enough not to acknowledge the indulgence, the unimaginable indulgences Charles had been giving him. At least not right away. Charles didn't want groveling gratitude. He didn't want a pampered layabout. He wanted results. Eventually, they would have to broach the subject of Thomas's failure. Thomas decided it would go over better if he showed courage and brought it up himself.</p><p>"Did you get the letters, in the end?" he asked. "I hope my fall did not—"</p><p>The move must have been the right one, because Charles sounded disappointed, but not furious when he said, "The boy escaped. The fault was not yours. I should not have sent you in there at all. The detective" –not even deserving of a name, apparently, such was Charles's wrath— "will be punished for this spectacular failure."  </p><p>"I can find where he has gone. I can see about hacking into the CCTV around the street. Track—"</p><p>"You are resourceful. You are tenacious. But I already know where he has gone," Charles said, now rubbing the roughly textured loofah over the stretched, too-tender skin of his cock. It scratched, and it <i>hurt</i>.</p><p>"He's crossed, hasn't he?" Thomas groaned in realization as Charles's fingers finally, finally wrapped around his cock.</p><p>"You know he would, didn't you?"</p><p>"Yes. I knew it was only a matter of time."</p><p>"How? How did you know?"</p><p>"There is something like a prophecy about him, you see. About him and a little girl from my world."</p><p>"You believe in prophecies?"</p><p>"My world has mechanisms for divining truths, even about things that have not yet come to pass. And no, I'm not talking about torture," Charles added, nodding in approval that Thomas's eyes had not gone wide with disapproval (they were too busy rolling back into his head with pleasure). "These mechanisms are exceedingly rare, but my position of… influence… has allowed me to secure the services of those who wield them. But it was your research, Thomas, that provided the clearest verification of all. I now know more about these prophecies than even the witches."</p><p>Thomas tried not to give into the pleasure, the desperate, all-consuming pleasure that Charles, who knew full well the extent of Thomas's uncontrollable attraction—always used to distract whenever he decided to actually <i>talk</i> to Thomas. He needed to remember these details. He wondered what these 'mechanisms' were. He already knew that witches existed in that world. Real witches, who flew, apparently, which sounded terrifying and marvelous in equal measure.</p><p>(As a joke to himself, and a rare but satisfying instance of playing Charles for a fool, Thomas had allowed Charles to labor under the impression that there had once been witches here, too—real witches with real magic—but that they had been systematically burned to extinction centuries ago by the church, in the Renaissance, in Salem, wherever. Charles had approved. It was the only time he had praised the 'fortitude' of the church here.)</p><p>"What does the prophecy say?" Thomas asked.</p><p>In lieu of a reply, Charles reached below Thomas's sac to push the plug in further. His gaze turned feral and hungry as he toyed with his prey. Even the snake slithered in anticipation. Thomas didn't know where to look, and therefore closed his eyes.</p><p>Thomas could tell he wouldn't get anywhere with this line of inquiry, not now that Charles's blood was up and his cock already tenting the perfectly pressed trousers he still wore, but he gave it one last try. "But he can't have gotten far, which means… He used your window, erm, wherever it is."</p><p>(Thomas knew quite well where the bloody thing was. One of the reasons Thomas had subtly suggested buying a Tesla had been because he'd be able to hack into it and trace Charles's movements. It was easy enough to track the car to the rundown little park that no one—no one sober, at any rate—ever went into, on account of the smashed up benches and stench of marijuana. It wasn't hard to find the window, the beautiful bluish strings that were so… Georgia O'Keefe-like, Thomas's mother would have said. Braver than Charles gave him credit for, Thomas had stuck a tentative leg through and watched it disappear at the knee before losing his nerve.)</p><p>"Yes, I have to assume there is only the one window in Oxford. But he cannot stay in the world he has traveled to forever. Even for him, it will eventually become inhospitable. He will be back. And I will be waiting."</p><p>Thomas could feel the pressure building in his gut. He was so close, he was…</p><p>"Do not come," Charles said, warning and low. "You don't want to dirty your bath water, do you? That would be disgusting."</p><p>Only the mental effort of scrying for secrets in Charles's most recent statement staved off his orgasm, which threatened to erupt at any second now that Charles had pushed his other hand into the water, just deep enough to pinch and twist Thomas's nipple with relentless intensity.</p><p>He took shallow, panicked breaths, and tried to think. It sounded… god… from the way Charles had structured the sentence, the world to which the boy had traveled was not the world of daemons and witches. And in order to know that it was inhospitable, Charles must have been there, too.</p><p>It was in between. Perhaps a pathway of sorts.</p><p>Thomas's brain stopped working after that.</p><p>"Charles. Please," he whispered, trying so very very hard not to come.</p><p>With his unhurried cadence and wicked hands, Charles simply continued what he'd been doing, rubbing his soft thumb under the head of Thomas's cock, pressing his nail into the center of Thomas's nipple. "I would have been quite put out if your injuries had proven more serious. I have decided that you matter too much to put into the field like that. Your talents lie elsewhere. Let lesser brains handle the unsavory business meant for brawn."</p><p>"Ungh," was all Thomas could reply to this compliment.</p><p>"Get up."</p><p>In his haste to rise (now that he had permission and could stop sitting on the plug), Thomas almost gripped the side of the tub where the snake luxuriated. She reared up in an instant, hissing.</p><p>"Careful, Thomas," Charles said darkly. He lent a hand to help Thomas out until his toes were sinking into the deep plush of the bathmat. "You need to be more careful, at every moment."</p><p>The towels were on the other side of the large bathroom, far out of reach, and Charles did not offer to fetch him one. No, instead he had Thomas stand there, naked and wet and shivering in the cold room, with his fingers horribly pruned and his skin breaking out into goose pimples. Thomas could see himself in the full-length mirror. His body was practically translucent in this light, a thin pillar of a chap who spent too much time indoors at a computer. The only feature he could make out was his cock, larger than people expected, thank you very much, and straining purple against his belly.</p><p>Charles turned him around and pressed between his shoulder blades, an instruction to place his hands against the cool marble tile of the wall. As soon as Thomas had done so, he felt the plug being ripped out of him, no warning, no gentle pulling.</p><p>He did not scream, although he wanted to.</p><p>Charles wore belts that made no noise when they were unbuckled, and trousers with button flies, so Thomas did not hear more than a rustle behind him as Charles got his cock out. And then he was inside him, rough and claiming and <i>devastated</i>. He fucked like a man who would not be convinced that Thomas was really there unless Thomas was literally surrounding him, clenching him. If Thomas had had a daemon, Charles  probably would have tried to touch it, just to make sure that the core of Thomas was still there; since Thomas didn't have a daemon, he seemed to be trying to find Thomas's imaginary core with his cock.</p><p>Thomas's hands were too wet (and his arm still too sore) to stay as firmly on the wall as they needed to. They slipped, and without the stabilizing pressure, Thomas tripped forward. Charles followed him, inexorable and brutalizing, fucking him so hard into the wall that Thomas's cheekbone would probably have a bruise in the morning, to go along with all the others he'd accumulated in the past twenty-four hours. His cock was trapped painfully between his stomach and the tile, sliding in the precum he was leaking steadily out the tip. His balls kept rubbing on the thin strip of grout, which felt like sandpaper against the delicate skin there. The fabric of the trousers and shirt Charles hadn't even bothered to remove before fucking him warmed and dried his back and the backs of his thighs. One of Charles's hands pressed just south of the waterproof bandage that covered the poulticed wound; he did not press into it, but there was always the distinct threat that he <i>might</i>.</p><p>Between all of these stimuli, Thomas had never felt so aroused, nor, in an odd way, so loved. For this, this was love, he could tell. A brand as rare and confusing as the antiquities Charles sold to fund his life here.</p><p>"You need… to be… More. Careful." Charles grunted each word as he thrust in, again and again, and his cock was both a promise and a threat.</p><p>It didn't take long until Thomas was gasping and coming, untouched, in long spurts all over the wall, white streaks adding to the lines in the dark marble. But Charles didn't stop, his fury and inconvenient worry not yet worked out. He flipped Thomas around and hoisted him up the wall before sinking his cock right back in. Thomas's back slid up and down, slicked by his own spendings. It was all he could do to wrap a leg around Charles, rest his head on Charles's shoulder, and hold on for dear life.</p><p>"Thomas," Charles whispered as he came, pumping hot and still distressed deep inside him.</p><p>They stayed like that for a minute, forehead to forehead. Thinking of the strength and discipline required of Charles's body to keep holding him like that for so long, and through such exertion, left Thomas dizzy with want. Charles held him, too tightly, and his eyes bored into Thomas's. The snake wrapped itself around Thomas's ankle, spiraling up and up around his leg…</p><p>For a split-second, Thomas thought Charles might kiss him.</p><p>But no. That would be impossible. Too sentimental for Charles, even in such a mood.</p><p>"I've dirtied you up again," Charles said softly, thumbing down the long stretch of Thomas's neck. The snake unwound itself and slithered away. "You'll have to run yourself another bath. If you add the jets, I might even join you."</p><p>That meant that the hour of decadent indulgence was over. Charles had worked out whatever feelings Thomas's injuries had awoken. Things were back to normal, and Thomas would be expected to perform once again, with no further babying.</p><p>He could do this. He'd been doing it for years.</p><p>And perhaps, given that, he could get some more information in the meanwhile.</p><p>(He'd been looking for an opportunity to hack into the smart lock on the front door.)</p>
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